What Goes Around

Four years since 9/11: Iraq looks a lot like Viet Nam, circa ’68, and Al Quaeda’s threatening LA and Melbourne.

There’s a national election next week, and the buzz is all about Don Brash – formerly the well-respected head of the central bank, now head of the National Party (center-right/conservative), and the only threat to Helen Clark (our current PM, head of the Labor-Green coalition government). Seems a few months ago, Dr. Brash told a creepy religious group known as the Exclusive Brethren that “we need all the help we can get.” But when a particularly nasty pamphlet - financed by the Brethren and smearing Labor and the Greens – surfaced on Wednesday, Brash didn’t know a thing about it. When more of the story came out on Thursday, he “owed no one an apology.” He spent Friday saying “sorry for any confusion” as if his political life depended on it.

But the catastrophe once known as New Orleans is still dominating every story and conversation. Helen Clark is using it to lambast National’s tax-cutting policy, claiming it would jeopardize the sort of investment needed to avert a New Orleans-style tragedy here. Justin, a friend from class, noted with approval that England is supporting her former colony in its time of need with emergency food supplies. My friend Tanya’s family is ok. Married to a Kiwi and living here, she’s from Lafayette, west of the worst-hit area, but all her friends from the Big Easy have had to evacuate.

I heard a story on NPR about Chicago’s efforts to aid the flood victims, and when Mayor Daley said the word “cot” - how to describe a South Side accent? it’s like the anti-umlaut: pronounce “o” with your mouth open wide, as if you’re trying to eat a hockey puck - I could see the bungalows, taste the pizza, smell the Lake in summer, and feel the Hawk pushing me down Adams Street on a blustery and frigid winter day.

Winter’s quite another thing here. It’s been and gone, hardly worth noticing. Magnolia trees and fragrant daphne – blooming since late July – have been joined by redbud, camellia, rhododendron. Daffodils and bright Iceland poppies dot the campus, and every time I pass a certain grapefruit tree on my way to the law school, I lose five minutes – it’s perfume a siren call I’m helpless to resist.

Last weekend, near the coast, I saw a flowering plum tree, and this weekend I’ll have to check the Domain. When we first arrived here, almost a year ago, the cherry trees were in full flower. An upcoming election was all the news. And, as the third anniversary of 9/11 passed, Bin Laden was a free man.

Cheers,
Sandie